Postgraduate Certificate in Public Management (Online)

Program Overview

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Key information

Duration

1-year (Max. 3-years)

Start of programme

October / January / April / June

Attendance mode

Online learning (part-time)

Location

Online

Fees

PGCert: £3,640

Course code

OLTF0029

Entry requirements

You should have a recognised UK Bachelor's degree, or international equivalent, in a social science discipline. Qualifications in other subjects will be assessed on their merits. Your application may be considered if you have previous education and experience, equivalent to a degree-level qualification, which includes suitable preliminary training. All international applicants must be able to show that their English is of a high enough standard to successfully engage with and complete their course at SOAS.

Course overview

Public sector organisations need good managers.

The Postgraduate Certificate in Public Management is a preparation for managing and advising public sector organisations. There is an emphasis on managing people, managing change and designing and using information systems.

Why study PGCert Public Management at SOAS?

• SOAS is ranked 38th in the UK for Accounting and Finance (Complete University Guide 2023).
• We're ranked 6th in UK for graduate employability (QS World University Rankings 2023).
• Interact with talented students, renowned academics, influential business leaders and top policy makers from around the world.
• We are specialists in the delivery of more that 40 African and Asian languages. As the economies of the Global South continue to expand, knowledge of another language and other cultures will be a big asset in the world of commerce and international trade.

Structure

You can study any two of the following modules:

Decentralisation and Local Governance - 30 credits

Decentralisation is a worldwide reality, as most countries are already engaged in a more or less advanced form of it. The following figures illustrate this trend: in the 1980s local governments around the world collected on average 15% of revenues and spent 20% of expenditures. By the late 1990s those figures had risen to 19% and 25% and had even doubled in certain countries. Moving beyond the fiscal arena, major public services such as education or health have also been transferred to local governments and political and electoral reforms have taken place. News headlines testify to the importance of local governance and local governments’ issues around the world.

Learning outcomes

When you have completed the study of this course, you will have acquired the knowledge and tools to:

• understand decentralisation as a complex political process and “system” with several dimensions, levels and actors, and define and distinguish it from other related concepts
• critically discuss various approaches and trends in the academic world in relation to decentralisation
• evaluate the success of various decentralisation approaches worldwide and explain why countries exhibit such widely different outcomes, in terms of economic performance, political reforms and effects on society
• explain the concept of political decentralisation, its components and implications
• critically discuss the links between political decentralisation, wider state-society relations and domestic accountability mechanisms in multilevel governance systems
• define and assess functional assignments, and understand why they are the keystone for effective public action and division of labour across levels of government
• explain the main principles underlying fiscal decentralisation, its components and implications
• analyse expenditure assignments, revenue assignments, transfer mechanisms and local borrowing in a given context and identify possible corrective measures
• evaluate the impact of the fiscal and functional division of labour across levels of government on local entities’ performance
• apply the concepts of local policy-making, budget and fiscal autonomy
• assess challenges to setting up domestic monitoring and evaluation systems, as well as to assessing the outcomes of decentralisation.

Tuition and assessment

Students are individually assigned an academic tutor for the duration of the module, with whom you can discuss academic queries at regular intervals during the study session.

You are required to complete two Assignments for this module, which will be marked by your tutor. Assignments are each worth 15% of your total mark. You will be expected to submit your first assignment by the Tuesday of Week 6, and the second assignment at the end of the module, on the Tuesday after Week 10. Assignments are submitted and feedback given online. In addition, queries and problems can be answered through the Virtual Learning Environment.

You will also sit a three-hour examination on a specified date in September/October, worth 70% of your total mark. An up-to-date timetable of examinations is published on the website in July each year.

Study resources

• Study guide: The module study guide is carefully structured to provide the main teaching, defining and exploring the main concepts and issues, locating these within current debate and introducing and linking the assigned readings.
• Key texts: Cheema GS and D Rondinelli (2007) Decentralizing Governance: Emerging Concepts and Practices, Brookings Institution Press
• Readings: Throughout the module you will be directed to study a selection of readings, including journal articles, book extracts and case studies that are of particular relevance and interest to the topics covered in the module.
• Virtual learning environment: You will have access to the VLE, a web-accessed study centre. Via the VLE, you can communicate with your assigned academic tutor, administrators and other students on the module using discussion forums. The VLE also provides access to the module Study Guide and assignments, as well as a selection of electronic journals available on the University of London Online Library.

Human Resource Management and Development - 30 credits

This module is concerned with the management and development of staff in public organisations, known popularly as Human Resource Management and Development (HRM). The basic idea is simple – that all organisations, and not just those in the public sector, can improve their performance if they manage their staff properly. Very often, HRM is also associated with a series of practices related to the main activities of managing people and that we, as employees, experience directly. This may include recruiting new staff or training and developing existing staff.

Learning outcomes

When you have completed this module, you will be able to:

• present a 'strategic' model of human resource management and development (HRM/D)
• assess the main functions of strategic HRM/D primarily, but not exclusively, in public sector organisations
• discuss the main contemporary issues for HRM/D in the public sector
• analyse the role of HRM/D as a managerial activity, while appreciating institutional and cultural constraints
• apply the main features of HRM/D to the public sector of developing and transitional countries with an understanding of its weaknesses and limitations.

Tuition and assessment

Students are individually assigned an academic tutor for the duration of the module, with whom you can discuss academic queries at regular intervals during the study session.

You are required to complete two Assignments for this module, which will be marked by your tutor. Assignments are each worth 15% of your total mark. You will be expected to submit your first assignment by the Tuesday of Week 6, and the second assignment at the end of the module, on the Tuesday after Week 10. Assignments are submitted and feedback given online. In addition, queries and problems can be answered through the Virtual Learning Environment.

You will also sit a three-hour examination on a specified date in September/October, worth 70% of your total mark. An up-to-date timetable of examinations is published on the website in July each year.

Study resources

• Study guide: The module study guide is carefully structured to provide the main teaching, defining and exploring the main concepts and issues, locating these within current debate and introducing and linking the assigned readings.
• Key texts: Bailey C, D Mankin, C Kelliher & T Garavan (2018) Strategic Human Resource Management. 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press.
• Readings: Throughout the module you will be directed to study a selection of readings, including journal articles, book extracts and case studies that are of particular relevance and interest to the topics covered in the module.
• Virtual learning environment: You will have access to the VLE, a web-accessed study centre. Via the VLE, you can communicate with your assigned academic tutor, administrators and other students on the module using discussion forums. The VLE also provides access to the module Study Guide and assignments, as well as a selection of electronic journals available on the University of London Online Library.

Managing Organisational Change - 30 credits

The public sector has witnessed substantial change in recent years, and change looks set to continue. Such changes began about two decades ago and were marked by a desire to privatise and ‘roll back’ the public sector. Although these processes are continuing on a global scale, more recent changes have focused on improving the capabilities of the public sector, often in terms of capacity building, or institutional or sectoral development. This in turn has led to significant changes for individual public sector organisations. Many of these changes or reform programmes have recast public sector organisations as being smaller and decentralised, often with a short lifespan, and being opened up to ‘market forces’. Of course, many large-scale bureaucracies remain; but even here change is occurring.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• describe and assess the relationship between an organisation and its environment, and apply these concepts to public sector organisations in general and to your own organisation in particular
• distinguish different levels of, and approaches to, organisational change both generally and with special reference to public sector organisations
• discuss what is meant by organisational culture, power, politics, leadership and learning, and apply them to analysing the dynamics of public sector organisations in general, and to your own organisation in particular
• identify how issues of structure, culture, power, politics, leadership and learning can be used to understand and manage change in public sector organisations
• apply different techniques of managing change to processes of change in your own organisation
• handle, communicate and apply with confidence the analytical framework of organisational change management.

Tuition and assessment

Students are individually assigned an academic tutor for the duration of the module, with whom you can discuss academic queries at regular intervals during the study session.

You are required to complete two Assignments for this module, which will be marked by your tutor. Assignments are each worth 15% of your total mark. You will be expected to submit your first assignment by the Tuesday of Week 6, and the second assignment at the end of the module, on the Tuesday after Week 10. Assignments are submitted and feedback given online. In addition, queries and problems can be answered through the Virtual Learning Environment.

You will also sit a three-hour examination on a specified date in September/October, worth 70% of your total mark. An up-to-date timetable of examinations is published on the website in July each year.

Study resources

• Study guide: The module study guide is carefully structured to provide the main teaching, defining and exploring the main concepts and issues, locating these within current debate and introducing and linking the assigned readings.
• Key texts: Senior B, S Swailes & C Carnall (2020) Organisational Change. 6th Edition. Pearson.
• Readings: Throughout the module you will be directed to study a selection of readings, including journal articles, book extracts and case studies that are of particular relevance and interest to the topics covered in the module.
• Virtual learning environment: You will have access to the VLE, a web-accessed study centre. Via the VLE, you can communicate with your assigned academic tutor, administrators and other students on the module using discussion forums. The VLE also provides access to the module Study Guide and assignments, as well as a selection of electronic journals available on the University of London Online Library.

Public Policy and Management: Development Assistance - 30 credits

Governments regularly transfer cash or make concessionary loans to other governments in order to promote economic and social development, improve the welfare of the recipient governments’ citizens, or help out with humanitarian assistance after a natural or human-created disaster. Politicians from richer countries attend high-profile conferences and commit to increasing these transfers, often encouraged by popular campaigns in their home countries.

Learning outcomes

The learning outcomes of this module are that you will be able to:

• define what is meant by development assistance and its constituent parts
• outline the main trends in development assistance
• gauge the growing role of NGOs, private foundations and other non-DAC (OECD’s Development Assistance Committee) organisations in the provision of development assistance and identify the sources of their funding
• discuss some of the theory of economic growth, and the role and effectiveness of development assistance in promoting it
• explain the definitions and measurement of poverty, and the recent reduction in global poverty
• analyse the relationship between growth, inequality and poverty, and be aware of the role of development assistance in contributing to the reduction in poverty
• assess the extent to which development assistance is successful in influencing recipient governments’ domestic policies, with respect to environment, climate change, democracy and governance
• describe what makes for successful and unsuccessful humanitarian assistance, including the relationship between immediate disaster relief and longer-term reconstruction and development assistance
• assess the role and incentives that aid agencies face; be familiar with the recommendations of the High-Level Forums for improving aid effectiveness and evaluate the extent to which these have been carried out
• analyse the effectiveness of general budget support and payment by results as aid modalities designed to improve aid effectiveness
• judge whether relatively new entrants to the development assistance field are different from previous players.

Tuition and assessment

Students are individually assigned an academic tutor for the duration of the module, with whom you can discuss academic queries at regular intervals during the study session.

You are required to complete two Assignments for this module, which will be marked by your tutor. Assignments are each worth 15% of your total mark. You will be expected to submit your first assignment by the Tuesday of Week 6, and the second assignment at the end of the module, on the Tuesday after Week 10. Assignments are submitted and feedback given online. In addition, queries and problems can be answered through the Virtual Learning Environment.

You will also sit a three-hour examination on a specified date in September/October, worth 70% of your total mark. An up-to-date timetable of examinations is published on the website in July each year.

Study resources

• Study guide: The module study guide is carefully structured to provide the main teaching, defining and exploring the main concepts and issues, locating these within current debate and introducing and linking the assigned readings.
• Module readings: Throughout the module you will be directed to study a selection of readings, including journal articles, book extracts and case studies that are of particular relevance and interest to the topics covered in the module.
• Virtual learning environment: You will have access to the VLE, a web-accessed study centre. Via the VLE, you can communicate with your assigned academic tutor, administrators and other students on the module using discussion forums. The VLE also provides access to the module Study Guide and assignments, as well as a selection of electronic journals available on the University of London Online Library.

Public Policy and Management: Perspectives and Issues - 30 credits

In this module you look at the state and how it is managed. This is a huge agenda and brings in ideas from political science, from history, sociology, economics, anthropology and management science. The purposes are these:

• to establish what is meant by some key concepts such as the State, Government and Policy, which are often taken for granted but about which we need to be clear – and to understand different interpretations
• to survey the principles and practice of public management using a historical and comparative perspective
• to introduce a range of ideas that have emerged about how to manage the public sector to demonstrate the importance of context in understanding management and changing management practices.
• to raise some issues about the nature of the policy process in different contexts
• to set out some of the main debates in the field in order to help you to make your own judgements.

Learning outcomes

When you have completed your study of this module, you will be able to:

• define the State and what it means in the second decade of the twenty-first century
• discuss the variety of approaches to public policy and management in different parts of the world and different periods
• analyse the elements of the social, economic, political and cultural contexts in which governments operate and the influence of these elements on approaches to management and policy
• explain how ideal types of government arrangements have influenced government policy
• advise on some of the major choices that governments have to make when making management arrangements
• evaluate the applicability of ideas about policy and management developed in one jurisdiction to another
• assess claims that the role and function of the state is everywhere in decline.

Tuition and assessment

Students are individually assigned an academic tutor for the duration of the module, with whom you can discuss academic queries at regular intervals during the study session.

You are required to complete two Assignments for this module, which will be marked by your tutor. Assignments are each worth 15% of your total mark. You will be expected to submit your first assignment by the Tuesday of Week 6, and the second assignment at the end of the module, on the Tuesday after Week 10. Assignments are submitted and feedback given online. In addition, queries and problems can be answered through the Virtual Learning Environment.

You will also sit a three-hour examination on a specified date in September/October, worth 70% of your total mark. An up-to-date timetable of examinations is published on the website in July each year.

Study resources

• Study guide: The module study guide is carefully structured to provide the main teaching, defining and exploring the main concepts and issues, locating these within current debate and introducing and linking the assigned readings.
• Core reading: The pre-module reading for the whole of Public Policy and Management programmes is: Rod Hague, Martin Harrop & John McCormick (2016) Comparative Government and Politics: An Introduction. 10th Edition. London, Palgrave.
• Additional readings: Because no single textbook could be found that covered all the issues raised in this module, students will be provided with access to a number of supplementary readings. These draw upon selected articles and extracts from books developing and exploring the nature of the state and governance, state-society relations, what states should (and should not) do, why, and how. There are case studies of policy making, evaluation, governance changes and structural and management reforms in a variety of contexts.
• Virtual learning environment: You will have access to the VLE, a web-accessed study centre. Via the VLE, you can communicate with your assigned academic tutor, administrators and other students on the module using discussion forums. The VLE also provides access to the module Study Guide and assignments, as well as a selection of electronic journals available on the University of London Online Library.

Teaching and learning

The programme takes a minimum of 1-year to complete. Each module lasts 10 weeks. You are registered for a maximum of 3 years.

Key dates and calendar

To find out when a particular module is running, please view the study calendar on each individual module page.

Fees and funding

Tuition fees 2022/23

PGCert (2 modules)
£3,640

Fees are inclusive of all required resources. Whilst we incorporate all of the costs into your module fees, depending on your country of residence, you may incur local costs such as: fees paid to local examination centres for sitting your examinations.

Fees may increase each year, therefore may be higher in subsequent years of study.

Pay as you learn

Our online learning programmes can be paid in full at the time of enrolment (thus avoiding any subsequent rise in fees). or on a pay-as-you-learn basis. Pay as you learn means you only pay for the module you are enrolling on.

Employment

Students of this programme will receive an invaluable preparation for high level appointments in government, public services, international organisations and NGOs.

• Find out about our Careers Service.

Key staff

Dr Alberto Asquer

Public policy and management, especially in the political economy of regulation and regulatory reforms, public policy implementation, public management.